After September 11, 2001, U.S. officials authorized the cruel treatment and torture of prisoners held in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and the CIA's secret prisons overseas.

This database documents the U.S. government's official experiment with torture. At present, the database contains well over 100,000 pages of government documents obtained primarily through Freedom of Information Act litigation and requests filed by the ACLU, and through litigation of Salim v. Mitchell, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of the survivors and the family of a dead victim of the CIA torture program. To learn more about the database, please read the About and Search Help pages. If you're a developer, you can also access this data through our API.

Search Result (72)

DOS Memo from William H. Taft to Secretary of State Powell re: Photographing POWs and the Geneva Conventions. Summary redacted. Discussion explores the US position on photographing and/or releasing photographs of POWs.
Letter from Cristophe Girod, International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), to William Howard Taft IV re: Working Paper on ICRC Sixth Visit to the internment facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, between January 26 th and March 8th 2004. Mr. ...
This State Department memo gives the State Dept.'s official position on the question of detainees/ Geneva Conventions: the Geneva Conventions apply to the conflict w/ Al Qaeda but not with the Taliban; Neither Al-Qaeda nor Taliban detainees have ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Non-legal Memo
Alberto R. Gonzales, Colin L. Powell, William Howard Taft, IV
Message entirely redacted except for a footnote that states "Note: The detainee's father — who has publicized his son's situation by occupying in a cage in downtown Stockholm throughout the past week — staged a protest in front of the Embassy on ...
Subject line states ICRC only. Ms. Dolan's remarkes are "The cable is in on yesterday's meeting. I also have copies of the two ICRC letters referred from PRM. If anyone does not have copies already, let me know and I will get them around." ...
Email forward of a Radio Free Asia article, in which Colin L. Powell tells RFA that the Uyghur detainees being held in Guantanamo will not be sent back to China. The article discusses allegations that the Uyghur detainees were abused/mistreated ...
Dec. 30, 2004
Email
JoAnn J. Dolan
William Howard Taft, IV
JoAnn J. Dolan, William Howard Taft, IV, Colin L. Powell, Sharon E. Ahmad
No relevant text. [No documents included].
Emails discuss a news article and a Meet the Press interview. The original email states "Newsweek reports that they have obtained a series of OLC memos from the fall of 2001 forward, quotes a State Department lawyer as saying "we were horrified" ...
Email refers to an attachment, which is a draft guidance on L memos as reported in a Washington Post report. Ms. Dolan's comments are: "Attached for input/clearance is draft guidance on L memos as reported in today's Washington Post report. We ...
Emails refer to the release of Russian Guantanamo detainees released by Russian Procuracy. A document is attached to the emails. [Document is not included].